I sent this by mistake to the original poster rather than the list - try
again...
In the first instance, Annmarie L Gemma wrote:
> I am assembling an on-line survey for users who have visually
> impairments or who have dyslexia as a part of my Master's thesis. I
> was wondering if anyone might be familiar with on-line survey software
> that is known for rendering accessible content to subjects who use
> assistive technology, or that facilitates the author of the survey as
> he/she produces accessible content?
Matthew replies:
I've worked on this idea before (survey for use in schools for career
counselling); unless an existing offering provides fully (and I mean
fully) customisable templates, I'd get something knocked together in
Perl or PHP with a MySQL backend (all free software).
If I were doing this, based on previous work, I would have the following:
1) Have only one question per page.
2) Remember, especially in your case when you have a possible dyslexic
element, the best online survey system is only going to be accessible as
your questions.
3) Unless your questions are <em>really</em> straight-forward, provide
help. Make sure that going to a help page preserves anything that the
client has entered on the page before selecting the help link/submit
button; the help should navigate back to the calling page, preserving
state. With multiple-choice questions, Provide help for the options as
well as the actual question unless the options are as simple as yes/no.
4) Provide navigation allowing the client to go back to the previous
question, to skip the current question for answering later and to go
back to the "welcome" page. In my original system, I had links to all
skipped questions on the "welcome" page.
5) Provide a style-sheet selector that allows different colour schemes
(for dyslexia) and font sizes to be used.
6) Provide a mechanism whereby the client can provide feedback on their
experience of the system.
That's all that springs to mind at present.
Cheers
M
--
Matthew Smith
Kadina Business Consultancy, South Australia
Work: <http://www.kbc.net.au> Personal: <http://www.mss.cx>